A Most Beauteous Aspect
by Amberwind2001
Summary: She's doing it again.


One-shot, written for the 100 Themes Challenge, prompt #14 - Smile.

I have no beta reader, so concrits and reviews make me love you long time.

~.o0o.~

**A Most Beauteous Aspect**

_"Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind... So crystalline. So pure. Such life saving power when you smile. You will never know how you have cauterized my wounds. So sad that we will never touch. How it hurts me to know that I will never be able to give you everything I have." - Henry Rollins_

She's doing it again.

It spreads across her features slowly, like warm honey. Her lips part, revealing white teeth and that tiny strip of flesh on her bottom lip untouched by lipstick. The corners of her eyes crease as the apples of her cheeks round, flushing slightly in her mirth. The tip of her wicked tongue curves out, skimming across her teeth teasingly, partly in amusement, partly in invitation.

He wonders how shocked she would be to know how badly he wishes to take her up on that unspoken allurement, to touch her lips and steal her breath away. Then again, she has an eerie ability to read his moods in spite of massive differences in age and species; he wouldn't be surprised if she knew exactly how she affects him.

The minx.

Her eyes sparkle, and he thinks that perhaps she's picked up his train of thought. It's a bad idea, dangerous for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with being on the receiving end of the flat of Jackie's hand. He's so old, so damaged, and so very alone-he's already let her in too far, and if she manages to slip underneath his armor much farther he thinks he might not be able to let her go when the time comes.

But when she looks like this, blonde hair glinting in the light of dual suns, wrapped in delicate native silks and giving him that flirty grin, he's finding it increasingly difficult to give a damn.

"You're a bad influence, Rose Tyler," he teases, his own manic grin blooming in her light.

~o0o~

_He finally accepts that invitation, when he knows it's one of the last things he will ever do in this body, and the kiss is bittersweet. It is light and death and an end, pain and longing, and the fulfillment of the fever-dreams of his loneliest nights, as well as a promise he never said out loud. Although he's saving her life he's ending his own, and he can't help but be sad that for this hello/goodbye kiss her lips taste of tears._

~o0o~

She's doing it again.

And oh, how he missed it. He had broken her trust, thinking always that he would have a little more time, and he'd very nearly lost her. Even after she'd said she accepted him, he could see that the smiles were a little more hesitant, a little unsure. Her cheeks no longer took on a hue worthy of her name, and the smile didn't quite reach her eyes.

But now she's waving a photograph in the air just out of his reach, nattering on about lampshades and lushes, making him wonder exactly what horribly embarrassing thing she had managed to capture on film when she dragged him to Shareen's New Year's party.

That sinful little tongue peeks out from between her teeth, and her eyes sparkle the way they did before, and he knows they're going to be okay. Or, at least, they will be if he can control this sudden impulse to haul her up and taste her.

She's too fragile, still getting used to the idea of what happened, and she doesn't know the whole truth of why he changed. She doesn't know that he let go and allowed himself that one brief touch of heaven before, and he can't let her know, not yet. It would shatter this delicate balance they have so recently attained, and she is too far under his skin for him to let her go now. So he makes the effort and practices iron restraint over this one aspect of his new self, even at the expense of having to loosen up elsewhere.

Oh, but she is not the only one with a wicked tongue this time, and he sees the flush on her skin spread down her neck as he flicks the tip against his own lips, fingers twitching as he fights the urge to grab her and explore her taste until he can separate the chemicals of toothpaste and mouthwash from the flavor that is intrinsically Rose. Her eyes dilate, and her breath picks up a fraction, and he knows he is not the only one who wants.

But he cannot allow himself that indulgence, even by mutual consent. Only because he is too new, and she would be too alarmed by the depth of his need, in spite of the enticement present on her lips.

"You are a terrible tease, Ms. Tyler," he breathes, and ponders exactly when his voice dropped an octave.

~o0o~

_He is shocked by the suddenness of her kiss, and it's over before he has the chance to react. It's hard and demanding, fingers running aggressively through his hair as if to devour him on the spot, and would have knocked the breath from him if he was inclined to that sort of thing. It's not the sort of kiss he had imagined from her, and adds to his increasing suspicions that something is terribly wrong. Later, when his fears are confirmed and Cassandra is taunting him, he can't decide if he's relieved or disappointed._

~o0o~

She's doing it again.

How he admires her strength for it. He has hurt her, time and again with the thoughtlessness that seems to have come hard-wired into this regeneration. She's faced down monsters, and been banished from her homeland by no less than Queen Victoria. Today, she was presented with a keen reminder of her own mortality. They both were.

_The valiant child who will die in battle so very soon…_

He told her the Beast was lying. He wonders who he is trying to reassure. Their timelines are tangled together now, hopelessly so, and trying to see where her life is going would be akin to trying to see his own future; inadvisable under the best of circumstances, and circumstances had been nowhere near best since the Time War. On opposite ends of the map, really.

He can feel that electric prickle up his spine, though, remnants of the prescience he used to be stronger with when he was nearly-ginger and wore a frock coat, and knows that things will go horribly wrong sometime soon. He's going to lose her, and the icy spike of emotion that thought drives into his hearts is enough to make him stay away, no matter how much his body screams at him to sweep her into his arms and snog her senseless.

Because if he does that, if he gives in to his body's willful urges and the temptations offered by that slice of red tongue against her teeth, the loss of this blonde angel may very well finish breaking him completely, as completely as she had somehow managed to save him from himself.

"You're too good to me, Rose," he whispers, pouring both his hearts out to her in his gaze.

~o0o~

_The image of her fades away, just as he finally gains the courage to tell her what he's sure she knew all along, and he curses the universe for its cruelty. The Time Lord ran out of time. He would never see that teasing smile again, nevermore be presented with her unique brand of affection, and he curses himself a fool for his own denials. As two tears make their way down his face, he wishes that, just once, he had taken her up on one of her many, many offers, and kissed her properly._


End file.
